Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Changes A Controversial Line In The Signature Song
Viola Davis is impressive in the titular role of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, but despite a mostly faithful performance, there is a subtle change to the lyrics of the central song. The original "Black Bottom" features a line that today would be considered controversial. While the Netflix original movie offers a subtle solution to the problem, the August Wilson play upon which the film is based reveals an additional wrinkle to the story.
The real life musician Ma Rainey, known by the appropriate moniker "The Mother of the Blues," earned her place as a legend of the genre by becoming one of the first African-American professional blues singers, cementing her reputation by being among the first generation of performers to record. She was a prolific, authentic, and influential performer, drawing upon a rich Southern musical tradition and influencing countless others with her recorded work in the 1920s and '30s, among which can be found the track "Black Bottom." Decades later, playwright August Wilson chronicled the 20th century black experience through a fictionalized imagining of a recording session for that very song. Now, producer Denzel Washington has brought the play to the screen, and the various players in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom do a fine job bringing it with him, most notably the late great Chadwick Boseman. But across these many years, this story has aged: sometimes well, other times less so.
In the original Ma Rainey recording, the first verse reads: "Way down south in Alabamy'/ I got a friend they call dancin' Sammy/ Who's crazy about all the latest dances/ Black Bottom Stomp and Jew baby prances." "Black Bottom Stomp" refers to a style of dance associated with the roaring '20s, also known as the jazz age. Originating amongst African-American communities, the dance was adopted by flapper culture and became a national craze. But in the Netflix version of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the following lyric "Jew baby prances" was subtly swapped with "new baby prances," ostensibly a fellow dance to the black bottom. For obvious reasons, it behoved the production to avoid the original wording.
What complicates things is that the new Netflix film certainly wasn't the first production which had to reckon with this issue: that would be the August Wilson play. A transcript of the play reveals that Mr. Wilson writes the line as "...all the latest dances, Black Bottom stomping, two babies prancing," avoiding the original issue entirely. It's curious, then, that an additional change was necessary with the solution seemingly before them. It's possible that jazz icon Branford Marsalis, who was responsible for overseeing the music in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, chose to return to the original recordings for inspiration, and perhaps felt that "new baby prances" better fit the original rhythm and spirit of the track.
Nevertheless, the important thing is that it remain solved, however the cast and crew reach that end. And none of this matter should detract from the poignant illustration of the black experience that is Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. What Viola Davis, Denzel Washington, George C. Wolfe, and the folks at Netflix are able to do with this film make a fine swan song for, and in no small part because of, the greatness of Chadwick Boseman.